Reflections on the Fantasy Covers post

[_ocelott_]

This is cross-posted from genrereviews because I know there are people who read here more frequently than over there. If you've already seen it there, feel free to skip past this version. Since, y'know, it's the same thing.

Last week I wrote a post about book covers, gender roles, and the bizarre depictions thereof. You may have noticed itThat post spread

Comments

[jimhines]

Heh. Ditto to pretty much everything you say here :-)

[_ocelott_]

Something else I noted, and I'm not sure if this is due to gender or a reflection of the differences in our posts or if it's simply because your platform is larger than mine, but I didn't have detractors the same way you did. Aside from the occasional comment about "but this is the way it's always been" and one or two people trying to convince me the pose on the Ringo cover is a legitimate defensive stance, it was all very positive. Nobody commented on what shape I might be in or told me the poses would be easier if I were a martial artist/acrobat/boneless creature. I'm happy (albeit somewhat surprised) not to have anonymous internet people tell me my problem is that I'm too fat or too old for this, but having read your follow-up post, it does make me go "hmmm."

[jimhines]

Interesting ... I'm betting some of that is just due to the numbers, like you said. But given the way male vs. female bloggers are treated online, I'd have expected you to get a bit more of the nastiness. (I'm thrilled to be wrong about that, though!)

The vast majority of the response on mine has been positive too, but last I checked, that thing had been viewed around 75,000 times, which is completely mind-boggling to me. So even if only .1% of people decided to be punks, that would still lead to a fair number of annoying comments. It makes me wonder how the people with the really big blogs handle it day after day.

If the Ringo pose is supposed to be a legitimate stance, wouldn't she have a better chance of defending herself if she opened her eyes?